5 comments about Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003 [OLD VERSION].

1. You can download this product for free, including the 2005 edition. Despite this fact the VC++.net compiles code that is about 1000 times slower than their visual studio compiler, even after optimizations are turned on (g1-g7.cpp). Even funnier is the fact that when I turn on SSE2 optimizations on their visual studio product, their floating point code test sample (gl-g7.cpp) runs slower on my Pentium 4 2.4 GHz machine (SSE2 enabled) than with the optimizations turned off. Nice advertisement for their optimizing compiler eh?



2. I was going to buy a game dev SDK and it required VC++ 2003. Thanks to these reviews I will forget the whole thing and use Dev C++ which is free (and I already use) and use open source game components like Ogre.



3. While Visual C++ Professional is a better choice for those needing to build optimized production code, Standard Edition 2003 rates 5 stars for the price.
   
   This product is targeted at students. Hence the low price and lack of an optimizing compiler.
   
   That said, here are some reasons a professional developer on a tight budget might still want to buy this product:
   
   - Can be used for many projects where compiler optimization is not critical or even relevant: prototyping, debugging, Managed C++, tools, many production apps, etc.
   - If you need high-performance compiled code (and can't afford the Pro version) you can download the optimizing compiler free from Microsoft. That compiler compares well overall with anything else available on Windows or Linux.
   - Simply the best C++ development environment available at any price. (Class View is far superior to 6.0. GUI-development tools are also far better, once you get used to them.)
   - .NET is superior to MFC for GUI development. However, Managed C++ is not the best tool for taking advantage of it.
   - .NET is superior to MFC/ATL (COM) for development of distributed applications. (Easier to develop, deploy, manage, etc.)
   - One of the most standards-compliant compilers around (unlike 6.0). This is necessary if you want to use a some modern techniques like template metaprogramming.
   - Excellent documentation for C++ and STL. (unlike 6.0, but also available online)
   - Excellent documentation for Windows API and many other windows-related technologies. (also available online)
   - MFC, ATL, and .NET libraries not available with "free" software.
   
   If you are on a shoe-string budget, this product is well worth the price. You will be more productive than you can be with "free" tools, and you will get a better product overall than Visual C++ 6.
   
   That said, 2005 is due out soon. Managed C++ is supposed to be much improved. In addition, a third-tier product will be introduced called Visual C++ Express, presumably at an even cheaper price than Standard.



4. For the price, you can't beat it. Great for making programs while taking a C++ class. Haven't had any problems with the compiler.



5. C# .NET is an easy transition for either a C++ or Java programmer. After crashing and burning on every Visual Basic Project I've ever worked on, this is a refreshing change. Its fast and easy - I only wish that it were an open standard. The code I've written in it and used as pseudo-code ported back to linux with only a few changes and wrappers.

No comments about Academic Edition;Education Edition;Scholar Edition VISUAL BASIC Professional Edition (S W) V6.0 CD-ROM Windows 95 Windows 98 NT.

No comments about Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition (Single Processor License).

No comments about Microsoft Access 97.

5 comments about Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Developer.

1. I agree with others on this "There is NO restriction on functionality. Only restriction is on LICENSE." Great product.



2. This Devloper edition is running great on my Windows XP machine with SP2. I have no problems at all with it. It is feature rich and is restircted to a testing enviroment as opposed to a produciton enviroment. Well worth the money! If you need free, Microsoft has other SQL alternatives such as MSDE SQL desktop engine and a downloadble fully functional SQL Express 2005 verison of CTP (community Technology Preview) So many reasons to convert from Sybase there is not room here to list them.



3. I have been fighting with "FREE" tools, and this is the best $44 dollar investment I could have made. It makes working with the (MSDE) Microsoft Desktop SQL Engine very quick.



4. Price was excellent and product was in stock. Used expedited shipping and received my boxed product very quickly. All instruction manuals, codes, etc. in tact.



5. All software programmers are aware of SQL.. this is the real deal. A must have for databases..and servers.

No comments about Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server.

5 comments about Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Professional 2002.

1. I have been using Visual Studio for a long time (VB for 10 years, VC++ for 5 years). This is the best yet. Sure, the .NET platform is slow in taking off, but it is a MAJOR improvement and will take a while. The new IDE is used by ALL the languages and is fantastic. The debugging tools are an order of magnitude better. The online documentation is essential (make sure you load the whole thing, you will usually need it). Even the IntelliSense is improved. For VB long-timers, this version is probably a bigger improvement than any others, including the transitions of 16-to-32-bit and from interpreted to compiled. Software productivity is almost certain to explored -- once it catches on. The hype is real, but it will take time. This is what it was like before the Web took off -- the people in the know just "knew" it would happen, it is just a matter of time. Be on the front of the wave.



2. This studio is leagues beyond the last. Microsoft is easing the burden of developers by simplifying distributed application development using .NET. Sure, for instance, you can go in and manually write the low level COM interface connectors if you prefer to have the "stick shift" control and specific performance attributes etc., or you can rely on the built in functionality of .NET and speed the development process.

   It seems that with this platform there is a bit of a learning curve even for the most experienced developers because of the great differences. But the online help is dynamic and useful when you get stuck on something.

   Visual Basic is not Visual Basic now. They seemed to have completely renovated the way VB works.

   The Common language Runtime (CLR) makes it possible to create solutions by interweaving any of the languages included with the studio. I believe there is a way to import 3rd party or future MS designed languages as well. So if one language is better at a specific task, then you can switch to it.

   The integrated development environment (IDE) is meant to maximize developer productivity. In using it, I haven't experienced the contrary. I must mention that I do like the flexibility of working on web applications in .NET. You can use a grid layout like a form builder, or the flow layout like a web page editor.

   I noticed a couple of funny things so far, but not worth mentioning. It takes some getting used to, but this is certainly worth it.




3. If you do pure C/C++ programming without COM, VB or C#, you won't see much of an improvement. Code profiling for performance measurements is gone, which was available in MSVC 6 (Microsoft Visual C++ 6). So if you get this software, you should get something like Rational Quantify for performance testing.

   C# and .NET are the biggest additions to this environment over previous versions.

   Our development environment went through a few upgrade pains. The VS .NET 2003 version fixed many usability problems found in VS .NET 2002. The UI is much better than MSVC 6.0. As with most compiler upgrades, certain C/C++ language features changed, which took us a little time to resolve (e.g. , __FILE__ and a few other things). I recommend a phase in approach when migrating to this new environment. Don't jump into this environment.

   If you want to do real C/C++ programming, you need at least the professional edition. The Visual C++ .NET 2003 Standard edition doesn't do optimization, but the professional environment does do optimization. Sadly, you can't get just the C/C++ compiler. Fortunately, there are more optimization options in this compiler, and it has buffer security checks, which I have found useful a couple of times.

   The HTML editor doesn't create 100% valid strict HTML 4.01, but it's a better HTML editor than MSVC 6. It also makes it easier to edit basic CSS.

   I haven't used all of the nifty features of this environment, but it's a decent improvement over MSVC 6. It's way better than MetroWerks CodeWarrior 5, at least with regards to price (current CodeWarrior version is 8.0, but 5.0 had some stability issues when I used it). I can't compare it very well to Eclipse, since I haven't used it that often (I like Eclipse, which is freely available at http://www.eclipse.org/). CygWin is a little difficult to use at times, but the price is right (free).

   Overall I recommend Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional. If you're a casual C/C++ programmer, look elsewhere. This will probably be too pricey for you. If you're a professional programmer, you should consider getting this software. If you're a professional Windows programmer, you need this software because this is the future of Windows programming.




4. Absolutely fantastic - best programming experience out of anything else I've used. Surely beats the pants of any java IDE.



5. I ordered this software from zuouw, and he informed me that it was actually an academic version. I was unaware of this. I thought from the ad that it was the professional version. This person actually refunded my money. I wish everyone in america upheld the business ethics that zuouw upholds. This was a very pleasant experience for me due to the fact that zuouw is a very ethical human being.
   Thank you very much zuouw
   Billy

5 comments about Hauppauge WINTV-PVR 350 PCI WATCH RECORD TV ON YOUR PC WINDOWS 98/ME/XP ( 990 ).

1. This has been a complete waste of time & money. Mainly I bought it for the video editing software. I got it installed okay but then it proceded to not work. When I try to record something the picture freezes. When I try to edit anything I've managed to record the nanoPeg editor "encounters a problem" & has to close losing any work I've managed to accomplish. The "handy" manual contains barely a page on how to use the nanoPeg and nothing at ALL in the way of troubleshooting. The bundled Ulead DVD MovieFactory SE comes with (surprise!) absotlutely NO INSTRUCTIONS WHATSOEVER (not even a help file)on how to use it! Fat lot of good it was to include it in the package. Now I guess I've got to download patches & zip files & uninstall this & change that & unzip files & install them just to get this <*#@] thing to do what it should've been able to do in the first place. Unfortunately the computer I (intended to) edit video on is not connected to the 'net. This item is an Amazing Colossal Waste of Time. Obviously you can't trust any of the positive reviews posted about this item. Spend your money on something more useful (which would be just about ANYTHING else).



2. I bought the PVR350 to transfer VHS and Beta to hard disk for eventual transfer to DVD (when I get a DVD burner), as well as to experiment with replacing VCRs with a home-made replacement. My plans included a dual-boot system (Windows 2000 and RedHat Linux 9, both freshly loaded and updated prior to card installation) dedicated to my home entertainment system; hardware is a 933 MHz Pentium III, 512 MB, 10 GB plus 80 GB drives, ASUS motherboard, etc.
   After working with the 350 for about a week now, I've got some opinions on some aspects of it. Overall, the hardware seems pretty good - no problem at all with the TV component outputs from the card to the TV - mpegs recorded off of cable seem to be just as good as the original feed. No problems at all with audio/video synchronization I see often complained about elsewhere - I've yet to have any sync problems (after probably 20 hours of recording). I'm getting between 1 to 2 GB of file size per hour, so my 80 GB drive would seem to be good for at least 40 hours.
   Only real problem I've had is with the nanoPEG editing software, and a slight problem with the PVR350 software (drivers or application, I don't know). First, the main software will not play the last 5 to 10 seconds of the MPEG file to the TV outputs. After doing a fair amount of editing - getting rid of stuff at the beginning and end of a tape transferred to the PC, I find that I'm missing the final few seconds (often disruptingly so) of the file. However, I can verify the information *is* in the file when I play it on the PC screen via Windows Media player, etc. The nanoPEG can't join two files, either, although it seems to succeed. My correction to the first problem was to attempt to append 10 seconds of blank screen/no audio to the end of affected clips. What I ended up with was a ten minute file that now says its 10 seconds long, even though it keeps playing past the 10 second mark, but you can't do any jog or other operations with the resulting file.
   The DVD-making software seems pretty good (Ulead DVD Movie Factory), but, as I have no DVD burner yet, I can't say for sure - I went through the motions of creating one, and it seems not bad (but I have no experience with DVD creation software).
   And, Hauppauge tech support seems fairly unresponsive. I sent them email, no response.
   My next step will be to work with it under Linux (all previous comments refer to it under Windows 2000), but then all of the software is Open-Source, and I know I'm on my own.
   In short, the hardware seems pretty good, but I'm not too impressed with some basic issues with the WinTV2000 viewing software and the NanoPeg editing software.



3. After 6 months, I only use the Hauppauge WINTV-PVR 350 for analog video capture and output to/from a VCR. The personal videorecorder (PVR) feature was a disappointment.
   Pros:
   1. Great analog video capture and output quality.
   2. Great analog cable TV channel video quality (although I'd rather watch TV on a TV)
   Cons:
   1. The user interface is not designed for analog video capture and output, and is awkward to figure out and use. For example, you click the tiny green bar twice to switch from the cable TV input to the composite video input, and you capture and output video by clicking on the Record button.
   2. Only MPEG-2 740x480 with 44.1 kHz audio outputs correctly, otherwise you can get strange error messages like "there is no common media type between these pins".
   3. Occasionally I get a blue screen error in another driver when shutting down my PC after using WinTV, so I suspect it's driver has a wild write bug that is overwriting another driver.
   4. When playing back recorded TV programs, there is no Close Captioning (I've come to depend on this due to a slight hearing loss).
   5. It doesn't mark/skip commercials like my Panasonic VCR.
   6. The remote control is so difficult to use to manually skip commercials that I gave up on using WinTV as a PVR, and never even tried the Snapstream trial.



4. I bought this solely for use as a PVR and things really didn't look good at first and I was on the verge of returning it for a refund. Then I realised that there's some VERY good alternative software out there which is free. After trying a lot of different driver versions for this card and numerous other pieces of software I have now settled on a program called GBPVR. It completely replaces the awful WinTV software and works so well, that I have turned a computer into a full time entertainment machine and stored it in the TV rack as opposed to on the desk.
   Not only does it give you 7 days worth of TV listings through a very nice interface, you can use it as a music jukebox, a newsreader, a video archiver, you can check the weather forecast on it, get theatre listings, rip DVD's, the list goes on and I can do this all without even connecting the computer to a keyboard, mouse or monitor. It simply runs through my TV and I use the supplied remote to control everything.
   The PVR functions are excellent, it does just about everything a TiVo box does and is just as nice to use. The onscreen displays are nicely laid out and the remote is suddenly a very logical thing to use, a big improvement over the Hauppauge software.
   The best improvement they could make to this product would be to enable it to handle DivX compression, so then you'd get a lot more recording for your hard drive space.
   Don't let the bad software put you off, with a bit of time and perseverence, you can have a fully functioning PVR (and a whole lot more) for much less than you would have to shell out for something like Sky+



5. I got this to work once, for about an hour. Then it stopped. I am a pro when it comes to computer repair. It worked once when I first installed it, but after that I ran into nothing but problems. After two weeks of fiddling (installing/reinstalling OS, installing, updating, searching) I finally came to the conclusion of: When it works, it works great. When it doesnt, it will never work again. I ended up returning this product and am in search of another. Definately not for the typical home user.
   
   Oh, and there is virtually no tech support for this product.

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No comments about Visual dBase 7-Professional, The Fastest Way to Deliver Business applications-Version7.